Conference aims to normalize pedophilia

Daily Caller ^ | 08/15/11 | John Rossomando

[freespirited]

If a small group of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have their way at a conference this week, pedophiles themselves could play a role in removing pedophilia from the American Psychiatric Association’s bible of mental illnesses — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), set to undergo a significant revision by 2013. Critics warn that their success could lead to the decriminalization of pedophilia.

The August 17 Baltimore conference is sponsored by B4U-ACT, a group of pro-pedophile mental health professionals and sympathetic activists. According to the conference brochure, the event will examine “ways in which minor-attracted persons [pedophiles] can be involved in the DSM 5 revision process” and how the popular perceptions of pedophiles can be reframed to encourage tolerance.

Researchers from Harvard University, the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Louisville, and the University of Illinois will be among the panelists at the conference.

B4U-ACT has been active attacking the APA’s definition of pedophilia in the run up to the conference, denouncing its description of “minor-attracted persons” as “inaccurate” and “misleading” because the current DSM links pedophilia with criminality.

“It is based on data from prison studies, which completely ignore the existence of those who are law-abiding,” said Howard Kline, science director of B4U-ACT, in a July 25, 2011 press release. “The proposed new diagnostic criteria specify ages and frequencies with no scientific basis whatsoever.”

The press release announced a letter the group sent to the APA criticizing its approach, and inviting its leaders to participate in the August 17 conference. “The DSM should meet a higher standard than that,” Kline continued. “We can help them, because we are the people they are writing about.”

APA spokeswoman Erin Connors told The Daily Caller in an emailed statement that her organization was not participating in the conference and would not comment on its aims.

Child advocate Dr. Judith Reisman, a visiting professor at Liberty University’s School of Law, said the conference is part of a strategy to condition people into accepting pedophiles.

“The first thing they do is to get the public to divest from thinking of what the offender does criminally, to thinking of the offender’s emotional state, to think of him as thinking of his emotional state, [and] to empathize and sympathize,” Reisman said. “You don’t change the nation in one fell swoop; you have to change it by conditioing. The aim is to get them [pedophiles] out of prison.”

According to Reisman, empirical data show that pedophiles typically molest many children before finally being caught.

“The data on paroled pedophiles confirms these predators repeat their crimes against children and are known to have escalated them even to murder,” Reisman said.

Several speakers at the August 17 conference, including B4U-ACT director of operations Dr. Richard Kramer and conference keynote speaker Dr. Fred Berlin, of the Johns Hopkins University, have actively opposed sex offender notification laws.

“What purpose does calling someone a ‘pervert’ or ‘predator’ serve anyway, other than to express contempt and hatred?” Kramer wrote in a March 14, 2009 blog entry on the website ReformSexOffenderLaws.org. “How is this productive? It certainly doesn’t protect children. I would urge all SO [sex offender] activists to listen to their own message: Stop buying into and promoting false stereotypes. Stop demonizing a whole class of people, and start learning the facts.”

Berlin has similarly compared society’s reaction to pedophilia to that of homosexuality prior to the landmark 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision that decriminalized sodomy.

B4U-ACT’s own website puts Berlin’s views front and center. “Just as has been the case historically with homosexuality,” he writes, “society is currently addressing the matter of pedophilia with a balance that is far more heavily weighted on the side of criminal justice solutions than on the side of mental health solutions.”

Berlin’s opposition to, and even noncompliance with, Maryland’s sex offender notification law drew scrutiny from former Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran in the early 1990s.

In 1990 The Baltimore Sun reported that Berlin refused to report pedophiles under his care who were actively molesting children.

“His empathy was with the pedophile and the pederast, not with the child victim,” Reisman told TheDC. “He refused to report the criminal to law enforcement because he said they were in treatment.

“Taxpayers pay for treatment and they are molesting kids. They go out to Berlin, and he gets paid by us [the taxpayers] for therapy.”

Reisman also claims that mental health practitioners like Berlin want to place pedophilia on a par with neuroses or clinical depression, and counsel pedophiles rather than incarcerate them.

“The scientific defense of pedophiles follows on the natural outgrowth of … [Alfred Kinsey’s] 1948 book ‘Sexual Behavior of the Human Male’ where he describes the rapes of infants and children, as would any pedophile, as ‘orgasmic,’” Reisman said.

Reisman warns that declassifying pedophilia as a mental illness could result in the repeal of child-protection statutes because the law always follows the input of psychiatry. She points to psychiatry’s normalization of sadomasochism, exhibitionism, and homosexuality as precedents.

“[I]t has been carried from the university to the law, going back to Kinsey,” Reisman said.

And other conference panelists such as Jacob Breslow, a graduate student in gender research at the London School of Economics, plan to discuss how political activists can exploit removing pedophilia from the next edition of the DSM for their own ends.

“Allowing for a form of non-diagnosable minor attraction is exciting, as it creates a sexual or political identity by which activists, scholars and clinicians can better understand Minor Attracted Persons,” Breslow writes in a summary of his upcoming August 17 presentation.

“This understanding may displace the stigma, fear and objection that is naturalized as being attached to Minor Attracted Persons and may alter the terms by which non-normative sexualities are known. Dr. Fred Berlin could not be reached for comment.

[metmom]

Yeah.

Wrong is wrong. It’s wrong outside American culture and mentality even if the rest of the world it’s fazed by it.

It’s not wrong because of a sequence of historical events which have nothing to do with it that somehow you are appealing to.

It’s too bad that you can’t grasp something as simple as that.

[layman]

Free speech should end where NAMBLA begins.

I couldn't agree more.

[mamelukesabre]

wow, I’m amazed you have the necessary number of brain cells to operate your computer. take a look at post 59. I don’t have time to dumb it down for ya.

[Tex-Con-Man]

Although the DVD is not readily available, one of the best documentaries about pedophilia is...

(The JPG is a link to the IMDB info on the documentary.)

I've been trying to find a reliable source for the movie for a while, but the Just, Melvin, Just Evil website doesn't even offer it for sale.

It is about Melvin Just. He molested his daughters when they were all very young. The son of one of the now adult daughters is the director. His mother was suicidal and he was interested in why. He starts digging up the family dirt and uncovers a monster. He interviews the grown daughters and the stories they tell are graphic and horrendous. (Including the murder of a social worker checking on reports of molestation.)

The damage this one man did is written all over the drug addicted and alcoholic lives of the grown daughters. They're barely functional, and yet psychologically struggle for what little sunshine they can find in their day-to-day existence.

The documentary is a fascinating study in the long term mental health problems resulting from selfish predators stealing the innocence from their prey.

[reformedliberal]

The title says it all: Just Evil.

It isn’t a mental illness. It is a choice to predate and selfishly take whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want, from whomever they want.

We have had this in our extended family, so I have done research. Pedophilia is an inborn sexual preference for children only. It is relatively rare. Child molestation is a case of opportunity and the perpetrators can be of any preference, including heterosexual adult partners. Often they are sexual addicts whose lives revolve around their sexual organs. Family members are the most likely victims just because of proximity and opportunity. It is way too common.

These are manipulators and liars. They lie to themselves, as well. Most psychiatrists doubt they can be changed, although some can maybe learn some control. First, they have to learn empathy, which they lack. There is even disagreement about whether having been abused causes abuse.

It is closest to sociopathy.

It sounds like those who want to condition acceptance are trying to differentiate between those perpetrators who have been caught and those who have managed to not be caught. There are hundreds of thousands in prison for molestation and only a few are actual pedophiles. No telling how many are out there still predating on children, who are usually young girls.

It is devastating, not only to the primary victims, but to the families of all concerned. Those who have had it happen in their families and close friendship circles know what I mean.

The entire *trend* towards dressing young girls in a provocative manner and encouraging a very young self-presentation among teenaged and adult women exacerbates the problem, IMO. Everyone has noticed how Hollywood and the fashion industry encourages an androgynous look while promoting near-anorexia among girls. An entire generation is adverse to adult female body hair, which I cannot recall being the case in earlier generations.

Personally, I think it can also begin with *regular* adult pornography. Like any addiction, overuse vitiates the response and the practitioners keep looking for more potent images.

[Rockerwolf]

It’s always fun though to see them get busted on To catch a predator.

[liberalism is suicide]

Pandora’s box is open and unless its shut,this foul abomination will become “respectable” also. But I don’t see Pandora’s box being shut before even more horrible consequences are inflicted on the country than are now.

[liberalism is suicide]

If the Attorney General’s list of subversive organizations were restored and revamped, NAMBLA should definitely be on the list.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

From the Encyclopedia Britannica entry for "pedophelia",

psychosexual disorder in which an adult's arousal and sexual gratification occur primarily through sexual contact with prepubescent children.

[gopheraj]

I totally agree. All of our children are grown but if someone did that to one of our grandkids, it would be a race as to who would shoot their butts first - me, hubby or their parents. I would do it in a heartbeat and gladly go to jail. I am getting so sick and tired of perverts who try to normalize their perversion. Good Lord!!!

[Mrs. Don-o]

You are partly mistaken in your definition of "orientation." It is not a made-up left-wing term.

Most of us who atrongly oppose the "gay agenda" nevertheless make a distinction between "orientation" and "behavior". Correctly used, "orientation" refers to a persisting pattern of sexual interest or arousal response, independent of the question of what causes it. The word "orientation" does not imply that homosexuality is a "natural inborn quality."

An arousal pattern is called an "orientation" whether it's influenced by genetics, prenatal/maternal factors, childhood emotional development, having a negative emotional relatioship with one's father, endocrine issues at adolescence, having been molested, seduced or assaulted, or any other factors at any stage in life.

Agreed, natural healthy sexuality is always heterosexual. That's the tendency any normal member of a sexually reproducing species will develop, by definition. But some people have to struggle with abnormal tendencies all their lives. They are not responsible for involuntary feelings. They ARE responsible for controlling their behavior.

As are we all.

[longtermmemmory]

that is the myth of involuntary.

it is not involuntary, it is conditioned like an adiction or a fetish. Conditioned from the normal. How many tortured children were conditioned by abusers and have deviated from the norm in order to “survive” the experience?

There is no involuntary, there is only do or not do. Normal or not normal as demonstrated by conduct.

[RichInOC]

“Remove pedophilia from DSM-V. It’s for the children.”

[Mrs. Don-o]

Homosexual tendencies are abnormal. If (as you mention) a child has been conditioned by abusers to have these abnormal tendencies or feelings, they are involuntary (on the part of the victim) --- but we can hope he will find a way to develop more healthy responses.

I know of a young man who was raised in an overseas orphanage environment where there were literally no adult men. None. Up to the age of almost five, he never saw an adult man, and when he was adopted by a normal U.S. family, he was evidently confused and uneasy about how to relate to his very decent and caring adoptive father.

He has been dealing with confused feeling about other males for a long time. On the one hand, maleness seems strange and exotic to him. On the other hand, maleness attracts him, but in a sexed-up way. He does not like or defend these feelings, he finds them unconfortable and upsetting. But his feelings are not voluntary on his part.

You can't justly blame him for his confused feelings. You can only try to help him progress toward greater normalcy. And of course he's answerable for his actions, as we all are. .

So we would agree that this young man is responsible for his conduct: the choice of "do or don't do." It is each person's duty to do good and avoid evil.

But you can't blame a person from an abnormal environment for being burdered with abnormal feelings, which he experiences as a persistent difficulty. This is what is meant by orientation. And this is where he needs help.

[huldah1776]

Not illegal in man’s law, but coveting is illegal in the Bible. Nip it in the bud at the source of want must be the way to go because that is what God says to do. If we can’t retrain our brains, why have psychologists? If psychologists don’t want to help others - GET RID OF THEM ALL. And I am a psych major. :)